Every year, a young researcher is awarded His Majesty the King of Norway's Gold Medal for an outstanding scientific work assessed at the University of Oslo.
In 2026, Hugo Ribeiro Mota receives this distinction for his dissertation «Deep Disagreements and Power: Communication Under Oppression».
The Faculty of Humanities invites you to an open lecture by the gold medal recipient on the same day as the medal is awarded at UiO’s annual celebration 2026.
Welcome by Dean of research Ada Nissen.
The event is free and open to everyone.
About the lecture
When people disagree about issues of great importance that are embedded in complex contexts, it can be difficult to fully embrace the disagreement or to completely avoid it. Often, these disagreements might be precisely those that one must not avoid. In philosophical discussions, such disagreements are referred to as “deep disagreements”.
Building on the dissertation “Deep Disagreements and Power: Communication Under Oppression” (2025), Hugo Ribeiro Mota proposes a new way of understanding such deep disagreements.
He focuses on the political, social, psychological, and material aspects of disagreement, thus going beyond what philosophers have previously proposed. This lays the foundation for a multidimensional model of deep disagreements which integrates how power structures may undermine much of the basis for dialogue.
This new model offers a broader understanding of the communicative practices involved in deep disagreements and allows for outcomes that have previously been ignored or sidelined.
In the lecture, Mota will explore how the model may be useful in armed conflicts that arise from deep disagreements.
Zoom webinar